Parable of the Buddha of the burning house
The Buddha's parable of the burning house is a poem by Bertolt Brecht . It was published in the Svendborg Poems . The source is the legendary novel The Pilgrim Kamanita by the Danish writer Karl Gjellerup .
Emergence
The poem was written in 1937 for the Poems in Exile Collection , while Brecht was in Svendborg (Denmark) in exile . It was first published in the Svendborg Poems in mid-1939 . During Brecht's work on the collection, it was called Poems in Exile . The collection was published by Wieland Herzfelde after Brecht's successful performance of Fear and Misery of the Third Reich . In 1938 Brecht said: “You can now give me the decisive position that I have not yet had in the literature of emigrants. And at the same time you can make the publishing house [Malik] dominant. "
content
The poem tells of Buddha Siddharta Gautama , who explains the doctrine of the wheel of greed and teaches about nirvana. Then some of his students ask about nirvana and its existential significance as well as how these principles are applied to their lives. They ask the Buddha how their way of living is nothing. Because they all want to follow him, but do not fully understand everything that the Buddha teaches them. The Buddha thinks about it a little and then replies with the words, “There is no answer to your question.” But later the Buddha turns to his other disciples who had not asked and he presented them with his parable. The Buddha relates how he recently saw a house with the roof on fire. He ran to the house and noticed that there were still people in it, so he went in and wanted to warn people. But instead of listening to him, people found it much more important to ask the Buddha all kinds of questions, such as: B. what the weather is like and whether there is another house in which they can then go. All of this happens as the house becomes more and more enclosed in the flames. The Buddha now decides not to answer the unimportant questions and leaves the house. He knows they won't learn until they're burned. This is the story the Buddha tells his disciples. In the last part, Brecht makes a personal comment. He criticizes how blind and indifferent humanity is today and describes this blindness as a great danger that leads to the greatest of all evils, war.
shape
Although the Buddha's parable of the burning house is a poem, it does not contain any rhymes, as is usually the case with poems. The line lengths are also very different. Furthermore, there is no clear separation of verses or stanzas, and no clear meter can be found.
interpretation
The asking
The motive of the questioner occurs in several incarnations , on the one hand as the questioning disciples of the Buddha who question him about the meaning of existence. The people described in the parable are very focused on their questions. But the two cases have different meanings. The students are simply the modern generation who want to understand everything, although an experienced and wise person would accept that there are questions without answers, and the meaning of existence is such a question.
The denial
The people in the burning house abuse the questions as a distraction to distract themselves from the imminent danger of the fire. This behavior is a metaphor for people who are trying to isolate themselves from problems and thereby place themselves in even greater danger.
The fire
The fire here serves as the symbolic representation of the danger to which people are exposed. But the danger is not immediate, because the fire starts on the roof and only moves slowly towards the people. With this, the people in the house are aware of the danger, but they themselves think that the danger is still far away.
Brecht's comment
The commentary gives a contemporary interpretation of the parable. The danger in Brecht's eyes is National Socialism , which is slowly spreading in Germany. It was a slow process and while many people foresaw the dangers of a Third Reich , few took the counterinitiative. So the people in the house, with Brecht the German people, were devoured by fire, with Brecht this means the seizure of power by the NSDAP and the installation of Hitler as Reich Chancellor. Brecht presents himself in the form of the Buddha who tries to warn the people of Germany of the danger, but when they refuse to listen, he leaves the country and fled to Denmark, just like the Buddha and the people in the house left behind.
Effect / reception
The likeness of the Buddha is used for demonstration. It shows its students that the art of silence and reasoning is an important skill. The Buddha's statement also strengthens Brecht's following comment, as Brecht takes up direct themes from the parable and incorporates them into his arguments.
Web links
literature
- Heinrich Detering , Maren Ermisch, Pornsan Watanangura: The Buddha in German poetry . Wallstein , Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-2554-8
- Bertolt Brecht, Denise Kratzmeier: Calendar Stories . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-22343-7